RED 2
RED 2 is a 2013 American action comedy film and sequel to the 2010 film RED. It was inspired by the limited comic book series of the same name created by Warren Ellis and Cully Hammer, and published by the DC Comics imprint Homage. The film stars Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Mary-Loise Parker, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Lee Byung-hun, Anthony Hopkins, and Helen MIrren, with Dean Parisot directing a screenplay by Jon and Erich Hoeber. Red 2 was released on July 19, 2013. *'Directed by:' Dean Parisot *'Produced by: '''Lorenzo di Bonaventura *'Written by: Jon Hoeber, Erich Hoeber *'''Story by: Warren Ellis, Cully Hamner *'Starring:' Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Mary-Louise Parker, Helen Mirren, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Byung-hun Lee, Anthony Hopkins *'Music by:' Alan Silvestri *'Cinematography:' Enrique Chediak *'Edited by: '''Don Zimmerman *'Country:' U.S.A. *'Language:' English *'Running time:' 116 minutes *'Budget:' $84 million *'Box Office:' $148 million *'Release date:' July 19, 2013 *'Distributed by:' Summit Entertainment, Lionsgate Plot Three years after the previous film, while trying to lead a normal life with girlfriend Sarah Ross (Mary-Louise Parker), Frank Moses (Bruce Willis) is approached by Marvin Boggs (John Malkovich), who claims people are still after them, but Frank dismisses him. After appealing a second time, Marvin drives off, and his car explodes. Although Frank does not believe Marvin is dead, Sarah convinces him to go to Marvin's funeral where he delivers a teary-eyed eulogy. After the funeral, a group of government agents approach Frank and take him to be interrogated at a Yankee White Facility. During the interrogation, Jack Horton (Neal McDonough) appears with an armed SWAT team, kills most of the facility's personnel, and tells Frank that he will torture Sarah until he gets information out of Frank. Frank escapes from the room, evades Horton's assassins, and with the sudden timely help of Marvin, who turns out to be alive, goes on the run with Sarah. Marvin explains that he and Frank are being hunted because they were listed as participants in a Clandestine operation codenamed Nightshade, conducted during the Cold War to smuggle a nuclear weapon into Russia piece by piece. Horton has convinced world agencies that Frank and his crew are terrorists and must be stopped. Victoria (Helen Mirren) calls, telling Frank she has been contracted by MI6 to kill the three of them. Meanwhile, top contract killer Han Cho-Bai (Lee Byung-hun), whom Horton knows is seeking revenge on Frank, is also hired. Frank, Marvin, and Sarah steal Han's plane and fly to Paris to find a man nicknamed "The Frog" (David Thewlis), with the Americans and Han in pursuit. As they arrive in Paris, they are stopped by Katya (Catherine Zeta-Jones), a Russian secret agent with whom Frank had a relationship earlier in his career. Katya is also in search of Nightshade, and joins them to find the Frog. When he sees them the Frog flees, but Frank and Katya catch him and bring him back to his house, where Sarah seduces him, both to help them and to prove she is a better girlfriend than Katya. The Frog gives them the key to his security box, which Katya apparently takes from Frank after drugging him; but Marvin, anticipating this, had handed a similar-looking key to Frank before his meeting with her. Marvin, Frank, and Sarah later find documents in the Frog's security box which point to Dr. Edward Bailey (Anthony Hopkins), a brilliant physicist, as the creator of the Operation Nightshade bomb. They find that Bailey is alive, held thirty-two years in a maximum security asylum for the criminally insane in London. Victoria (alerted by Marvin) unexpectedly confronts the trio, but helps to fake their deaths and then gain access to the asylum. Frank and Victoria meet Bailey, who is hyperactive and cannot rationally respond to their questions thanks to mind-fogging drugs the asylum had been giving him, so they take him to one of Marvin's safehouses. After the drugs begin to wear off, Bailey remembers the bomb is still in Moscow. They go to Moscow, and Bailey concludes he hid the bomb in the Kremlin. They break into the Kremlin, and Bailey locates the suitcase-sized bomb, which is powered by red mercury, which has no radioactive signature and causes no fallout. As they are about to leave, Katya stops them. Frank persuades her to switch to their side. After they escape and are celebrating, Victoria, who has escaped MI6 imprisonment for failing to kill him, calls Frank from London and tells him that Bailey was locked up because he had wanted to ''detonate the bomb, not sell it. Bailey quickly holds Frank at gunpoint and confirms Victoria's message, revealing that he made a deal with Horton and the Americans to give them the red mercury. He shoots Katya, staging her death at Frank's hands, and leaves with the bomb case. Horton reneges on his deal with Bailey, intending to interrogate him until all his secrets have been tortured out of him, but Bailey during air transit escapes using a nerve gas he created, administering the antidote to both himself and Horton. Bailey then moves to the Iranian embassy in London; before Frank can follow him, Han attacks. Reaching a standoff, Frank urges Han to join sides with him and stop the bomb. Han finally relents, and the five enact a plan to recapture Bailey and the bomb. Sarah first seduces the Iranian ambassador, then takes him hostage. Marvin poses as a person seeking to defect to Iran, causes a diversion with the embassy plumbing, and the disguised team comes to "fix" it. They discover in the ambassador's safe plans disclosing the location of the bomb, but find that Bailey has already triggered the bomb's countdown timer and killed Horton. When they are discovered by embassy guards, Bailey seizes Sarah and flees to the airport to escape the imminent explosion. Frank, Marvin, Victoria, and Han, taking the active bomb case with them, give chase, but Marvin cannot stop the countdown. Frank, holding the bomb case, boards the plane and confronts Bailey who releases Sarah and forcefully insists he take the bomb off the plane with her. They rejoin Marvin, Victoria, and Han and wait for death as Han's plane takes off. As it disappears high in the sky it explodes in an immense fireball. Frank reveals that he had covertly placed the bomb from the case into a compartment near the plane's exit and confronted Bailey with only a closed empty case. The closing scene shows Sarah enjoying herself on a mission in Caracas with Frank and Marvin. Cast '- Michael Douglas' - Robert Wakefield '- Benicio Del Toro '- Javier Rodriguez '- Don Cheadle' - Montel Gordon '- Dennis Quaid' - Arnie Metzger '- Catherine Zeta-Jones' - Helena Ayala '- Luis Guzman' - Ray Castro '- Erika Christensen' - Caroline Wakefild '- Topher Grace' - Seth Abrahams '- Amy Irvin' - Barbara Wakefield '- Jacob Vargas' - Manolo Sanchez '- Miguel Ferrer' - Eduardo Ruiz '- Tomas Millan' - General Salazar '- Steven Bauer' - Carlos Ayala '- Clifton Collins Jr' - Francisco Flores '- Salma Hayek' - Rosario '- Benjamin Bratt' -Juan Salazar Music Release 'Box office performance:' Traffic was given a limited release on December 27, 2000 in four theaters where it grossed USD $184,725 on its opening weekend. It was given a wide release on January 5, 2001 in 1,510 theaters where it grossed $15.5 million on its opening weekend. The film would make $124.1 million in North America and $83.4 million in foreign markets for a worldwide total of $207.5 million, well above its estimated $48 million budget. Critical response: 'Rotten Tomatoes' reported that 92% of critics gave the film positive write-ups, based on a sample of 154, with an average score of 8/10, and the consensus being "Soderbergh successfully pulls off the highly ambitious Traffic, a movie with three different stories and a very large cast. The issues of ethics are gray rather than black-and-white, with no clear-cut good guys. Terrific acting all around." At Metacritic the film has received an average score of 86, based on 34 reviews. Film critic Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars and wrote, "The movie is powerful precisely because it doesn't preach. It is so restrained that at one moment—the judge's final speech—I wanted one more sentence, making a point, but the movie lets us supply that thought for ourselves". Stephen Holden, in his review for The New York Times, wrote, "Traffic is an utterly gripping, edge-of-your-seat thriller. Or rather it is several interwoven thrillers, each with its own tense rhythm and explosive payoff". In his review for The New York Observer, Andrew Sarris wrote, "Traffic marks Soderbergh definitively as an enormous talent, one who never lets us guess what he's going to do next. The promise of Sex, Lies and Videotape has been fulfilled". ''Entertainment Weekly'' gave the film an "A" rating and praised Benicio del Toro's performance, which critic Owen Gleiberman called, "haunting in his understatement, it becomes the film's quietly awakening moral center". Desson Howe, in his review for the Washington Post, wrote, "Soderbergh and screenwriter Stephen Gaghan, who based this on a British television miniseries of the same name, have created an often exhilarating, soup-to-nuts exposé of the world's most lucrative trade". In his review for Rolling Stone, Peter Travers wrote, "The hand-held camerawork – Soderbergh himself did the holding—provides a documentary feel that rivets attention". However, Richard Schickel, in his review for Time, wrote, "there is a possibly predictable downside to this multiplicity of story lines: they keep interrupting one another. Just as you get interested in one, Stephen Gaghan's script, inspired by a British mini-series, jerks you away to another". Top ten lists: ''Traffic'' appeared on several critics' top ten lists for 2000. Some of the notable top-ten list appearances are: * 2nd — A. O. Scott, The New York Times * 2nd — Jami Bernard, New York Daily News[25] * 2nd — Bruce Kirkland, The Toronto Sun[26] * 3rd — Stephen Holden, The New York Times * 3rd — Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly * 3rd — Peter Travers, Rolling Stone * 4th — Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times * 4th — Jack Mathews, New York Daily News Accolades: The film won Academy Awards in the categories Best Director (Steven Soderbergh), Best Supporting Actor (Benicio Del Toro), Best Film Editing (Mirrione) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Stephen Gaghan). It was also nominated for Best Picture, alongside another Soderbergh film, Erin Brokovich, but lost to Gladiator. Traffic '''was nominated for five Golden Globe Awards''' including''' Best Motion Picture - Drama, Soderbergh''' for''' Best Director, Del Toro for Best Supporting Actor - Motion Picture, Catherine Zeta-Jones for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture and Steven Gaghan for Best Screenplay. B'oth Del Toro and Gaghan' won in their respective categories. In addition, Del Toro won Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role. He went on to win '''BAFTA Award for''' Best Actor in a Supporting Role along with Gahan, who won for '''Best Adapted Screenplay. Steven-Soderbergh-Oscar.jpg|Steven Soderbergh receiving his Oscar for Best Director for Traffic ''' '''New York FIlm Critics Circle named Traffic as the Best Film, Soderbergh as Best Director, and Del Toro as Best Supporting Actor. Los Angeles Film Critics Association awarded Soderbergh Best Director. Members of the Toronto Film Critics Association voted Soderbergh as Best Director and del Toro as Best Actor. National Society of Film Critics also voted Soderbergh and del Toro as Best Director and Best Supporting Actor, respectively.